Background/Knowledge Gap: Skin cancer continues to be the most common malignancy in the United States with melanoma-associated mortality continuing to rise. Rates of skin cancer remain highest in Caucasian populations; however, when diagnosed, skin cancer in skin of color has significantly worse prognosis. Thus, skin cancer prevention campaigns are important for individuals with all skin types. Programs such as Sun Protection Outreach Training by Students (SPOTS) teach local adolescents proper sun-protection and cancer prevention techniques, and daily sunscreen use continues to be the cornerstone of the curricula. With the continued expansion of virtual teaching through platforms like Zoom, these campaigns can take a more targeted approach to identifying vulnerable populations. Thus, the goal of this review was to summarize existing literature on predictors of sunscreen use in adolescent and high school populations. 

Methods/Design: A comprehensive literature search was done using the terms (“sunscreen” or “spf” or “sun protection”) and (“high school” or “teen” or “teenager” or “adolescent”) in Pubmed, Embase and Web of Science. Quantitative data on predictors of sunscreen use were collected.

Results/Finding: A total of 20 studies met all inclusion criteria. All studies examining gender showed increased sunscreen use in females compared to males (n=11). In addition, 5/5 studies showed increased sunscreen usage in younger adolescents compared to older adolescents. Caucasian students were more likely to use sunscreen compared to other ethnicities (4/4 studies). This may be due to perceived sun-sensitivity, as 4/4 studies also showed increased sunscreen use in populations that believed that were more susceptible to sun damage. Two studies examined perceived self-efficacy and concluded that higher levels of sunscreen use correlated with higher self-efficacy, while four studies concluded that increased social or familial use of sunscreen correlated with higher rates of sunscreen use.

Conclusions/Implications: Males, as well as non-Caucasian adolescents, are at the greatest risk for not using sunscreen. This may be due to believing they are low risk for skin cancer, low levels of perceived self-efficacy, or low levels of social and familial use of sunscreen. Skin cancer prevention campaigns may benefit from targeting these populations to make the largest impact on changing sunscreen use habits.

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